


Tahlia and The Black Pyramid

by KawaiiSpider



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:21:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25858090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KawaiiSpider/pseuds/KawaiiSpider
Summary: The story of a world destroyed, and the two girls who try to find out why.
Kudos: 4





	1. The Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Currently the first draft of a story, and missing the middle.

The tall buildings that lined the street had been full of people once. People whose bones now littered the city, with plants of all sorts growing between ribs and out of eye sockets. It hadn’t taken long for nature to return to the city, and all the other cities like it. Birds nested inside houses, bees happily collected nectar from wildflowers that grew in parks and lawns.

None of the survivors were sure what had caused the disaster. There had been some build-up to it, of course, strange events across the world. Outbreaks of violent madness. A sudden uptick in murders and suicides. But then a wave of insanity had swept across the entire planet, and people had fallen on each other with whatever weapons they had at hand. Almost everyone was affected, and most of those who weren’t were killed by those who fell prey to whatever madness was spreading. Sometimes, the people would remember their friends or power structures, and work together to kill anyone different to them, arranging the bodies into grotesque sculptures made from human flesh. But the madness made them forget everything aside from killing, and once they ran out of victims, even the most organized of killers starved to death, leaving the world empty for the few survivors, hidden away from the eyes of the mad.

Tahlia’s mother was one of these people. She had killed her boyfriend when he had tried to kill the then two-year-old Tahlia and had hidden far away from the city on her parent’s old farm, killing anyone who approached with a rifle. Tahlia was raised with stories of the world that was, stories filled with technology and wonder, stories of communities and people who had ceased to exist.

When Tahlia was eight, she met a new person for the first time, a young man who joined them on the farm, and by the time she was twelve, their little town had nearly thirty people, all working together to survive. They had moved closer to the city, drawn by the prospect of scavenging what remained, and it was while scavenging, that Tahlia first met Alex.

It was early in the morning, the sun’s orange glow reflecting off the few unbroken panes of glass in the skyscrapers and scattering into the buildings. Tahlia carried a pistol carefully in front of her, for protection against wild animals, or worse. There had been deaths and disappearances from the group since the very beginning. Deaths that couldn’t be blamed on bad luck, or animals, and disappearances that didn’t fit the character of those who had vanished without trace. Tahlia wasn’t worried, she was good with both her pistol, and the rifle slung across her back, and she didn’t intend on disappearing today.

She had some luck right away, finding a store with cans of food and some useful tools, before heading onwards until she heard a sound ahead of her. The sound of a girl screaming. It wasn’t anyone she recognized, or at least she didn’t think so, and there was no one else assigned to this area, but common decency prevented her from not at least seeing if she could help. Carefully and quietly, she moved towards the source of the screaming, which seemed to be the stairs leading to the old trainline beneath the city. The bottom of the stairs were dark, but not dark enough to hide the first body, a young woman missing half of her head and all of her limbs. Tahlia almost stopped there, but there was another scream, a scream of terror and pain, and Tahlia pushed through the fear, turning her torch on, raising her pistol and moving down the stairs.

There were three more bodies here, two men and another woman. One of the men, an older figure with grey hair was cleanly and vertically bisected, grey brain matter and internal organs clearly visible in the light of Tahlia’s torch. Another of the men was missing a head and one arm, while the woman’s face had been torn off down to her chest, leaving only a bloody skull, her tongue lolling out between red teeth. Fighting the urge to throw up, Tahlia raised the torch towards the source of the screaming and found it. A young girl, about her age, was being pushed up against the wall of the train station, clutching the bloody stump of her arm as a woman paused from swinging a machete to look at the new source of light. Tahlia saw something shifting in the shadows behind the woman, a darkness that seemed to move just ahead of the woman’s motions, as if puppeting her every move. Without thinking, Tahlia fired, the first bullet ricocheting off the wall, but the second catching the woman in the arm. Screaming like a wild animal, the woman charged, faster than natural, propelled by the shadows as Tahlia fired again. This bullet hit the woman in the chest, and her pace slowed before the next bullet caught her in the throat and she went down with a gurgle, the shadows scattering behind her. Tahlia emptied the rest of the clip into the woman’s prone form before rushing to the wounded girl, quickly pulling a bandage and tourniquet from her backpack.  
“Here you go… Don’t worry…”  
The girl whispered a “Thank you” before passing out.

Tahlia half carried the girl to the surface before retrieving the flare gun from her backpack and firing it into the sky. She then sat with the unconscious girl for two hours until help arrived.  
Help meant Dragon and Marcus. Dragon was old but wiry, with a long white moustache and a bald head. His actual name was Ju-Long, but everyone besides his wife called him Dragon. Marcus was younger, only seventeen or so, but muscular, though he was a very gentle person by nature. Together with Tahlia, they carried the young girl back to the shelter.

The shelter was towards the edge of the CBD, built in what was once an open market. It had been walled off, with hidden watch-places in the surrounding buildings, and a large gate powered by a set of generators they had salvaged or repaired. There were farms here, in what was once a large park, as well as all sorts of workshops and even a makeshift factory that made tractors. People had claimed bits of nearby buildings as houses, and some even lived outside the shelter, returning to work or to take shelter in times of danger.

As Tahlia and the others returned with the wounded girl, there was a rush of activity and excitement. Newcomers to the town were rare, especially one as exciting as a wounded child. Mary, who had been a nurse before the disaster quickly took her into the hospital, where her clothes were changed, and her wound cleaned. Tahlia had a quick shower, before returning to sit beside the girl, waiting anxiously for her to wake.


	2. Setting Off

While she sat, the council questioned her about what she had seen. She described the strange shadows she had seen behind the woman she had killed, but the three council members were dismissive. One of them, a woman named Kalli, shook her head.  
“Sounds like shock, don’t worry Tahlia, you did a good and noble thing, saving that girl.”  
The other two nodded.  
“I know what I saw.”  
“Hush child. Tell us where it happened.”  
Tahlia gave them directions, and soon scouts were sent out to retrieve the bodies and investigate. They returned a few hours later, carrying a number of weapons and backpacks, one of which was filled with books and ancient hard-drives. These were placed in a corner until the girl woke up.

Tahlia was the only one there when the girl finally stirred, and she quickly called out for Mary, who rushed in to check her before letting the two girls talk.  
“Hi… I’m Tahlia.”  
“Alex. Thanks for saving me.”  
Alex looked around the room, painted a crisp white, and decorated with medical posters and charts.  
“Where am I?”  
“This is the shelter, well, the medical room.”  
“Shelter? Is that like a town?”  
“Sort of. Not really a town, but we have lots of people here.”  
“My dad always said to stay away from towns. Most of them are run by crazies…”  
Tahlia laughed at this, and the girl gave a half grin.  
“Well, the council are old and grumpy, but they aren’t crazy, I think.”  
“That’s a relief.”

It was just then that the council arrived and set about questioning Alex about what her and the people she was traveling with were doing here. Tahlia listened as Alex explain that her, her father, and a few others were searching for the cause of the disaster.  
“There was no cause. It just happened.”  
The other council members shushed the one who had spoken, and Alex continued.  
“You need to believe me. My father, he found data that said the same thing could happen again, and everyone who is left will go crazy, just like all those people ten years ago, only this time there won’t be enough survivors… Everyone will be dead.”  
“Nonsense.”  
“This girl is clearly mad.”  
“Ridiculous.”  
They asked her a few more questions, but didn’t really listen to the answers she gave, and soon swept out of the room. Alex looked at Tahlia.  
“I’m not crazy…”  
“You really think your dad was right?”  
“Of course, and as soon as I can walk, I’m heading back out there. Finish what he started.”  
Tahlia thought for a moment.  
“I’ll go with you.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“You won’t survive out there, not with your arm hurt.”  
Alex laughed.  
“I wouldn’t say its hurt…”  
She looked down at her missing arm, and Tahlia saw a tear roll down Alex’s cheek before she brushed it away. Tahlia put her hand on Alex’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.  
“I’ll come with you. Don’t bother arguing.”  
Alex grinned.  
“Fine. When can we leave?”

Tahlia thought about telling her mum but decided against it. Instead she wrote a quick note and left it under her pillow. She snuck into the storeroom and got two bags, filling them with supplies and ammo, grabbing a spare pistol for Alex before hiding them outside the gate and returning to Alex, who was sitting up and going through the bags, wincing every now and then as she tried to use her missing arm out of habit.  
“Maybe we should wait a few days…”  
“No, the sooner we go, the better. We only have a few months, according to my dad’s notes.”  
“A few months to do what?”  
“Find out what caused the disaster, and then make sure it can’t happen again.”  
“Where would we even start?”  
“Before everything shut down, there was a lab doing some human tests, and according to the notes my dad found, the scientists there didn’t go crazy, and they could record exactly what happened to the people. He thought that if he could find it, there might be more records there. It’s only a week’s walk from here.”

Tahlia added extra medical supplies to the bags.


End file.
